


before the flight, the fall

by ambyr



Category: Green Sky Trilogy - Zilpha Keatley Snyder
Genre: Acrophobia, Gen, Post-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-16
Updated: 2016-12-16
Packaged: 2018-09-09 02:21:17
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,005
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8871904
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ambyr/pseuds/ambyr
Summary: Teera has always longed to live and glide as a Kindar, but the reality of life above the root is more challenging that her childhood dreams. Fortunately, she has friends to help.





	

**Author's Note:**

  * For [queenbookwench](https://archiveofourown.org/users/queenbookwench/gifts).



Teera stood on the branchpath outside her family's nid-place and stared uneasily at the glidepath that opened below her. Beside her, her cavern-kin Charn shifted from foot to foot, impatient.

"Come on, Teera. We'll be late."

"I'm coming," she insisted. She meant it when she said it. She was eager to get to the Garden and did not want to be tardy. It had been easy enough when she and her family still lived in the Vine Palace, but weeks ago they had moved to their own private nid-place in the farheights, near the other Erdlings in Orbora. Since then she had been making her way to the Garden by ladder and branchpath, climbing down hand over hand. It was a slow process, one that required waking up while the moon-moths still glowed on the honey lamps. If she could just learn to glide, she could travel much more quickly. But when Charn spread his arms, opening his shuba, hers remained slack by her sides. The glidepath before them seemed endless, deep as the Bottomless Lake.

"You always talked about how your grandmother was a Fallen," Charn reminded her. "You always wanted to play Kindar. Well, this is your chance! With a real shuba and everything."

"All right," Teera said. "All right." She took a deep breath and jumped. Behind her, Charn gave out a whoop and jumped as well.

Branches flashed past her at an alarming rate, and she reflexively spread her arms to their full extension, breaking her fall with the billowing folds of silk. As her speed slackened, Charn shot past her. He had pulled his arms in, picking up speed for the dive.

"Teera!" he shouted as fell below her. "Don't slow yet!"

She knew he was right, knew she was still a long, long way from the lowest level of Skygrund, where their destination waited. She tried to pull her arms in, but every time she picked up speed, her stomach gave an unpleasant lurch. Flashes of memory came to her from her first time climbing the vines to Orbora, and each time she remembered her terror her arms jerked, sending her careening toward the branches on one side or the other of the glidepath. Finally, in defeat, she let her glide bring her to the nearest branchpath and settled there. Her shuba panels, no longer held taut by air rushing at them from below, shook as she trembled, taking deep gulps of air to calm herself.

Charn was long out of sight. With a sigh, Teera began the slow climb down.

* * *

"I wish _you_ could teach me," Teera concluded, as she recounted her morning to her friend Pomma. "I've seen you glide. You could teach me tricks Charn's teachers never thought of."

Pomma averted her eyes, uncomfortable with the hint of unjoyfulness toward Charn in Teera's voice. She understood how badly her friend wanted to glide, but not why it was so important to her that her skill outpace that of others. 

"Charn has more practice," she reminded Teera. "He was learning to glide while we were living in the Vine Palace and hiding in the Garden, and his family moved to the farheights before yours."

"Yes," Teera agreed, her tone even more unjoyful.

Pomma forced herself to look at her friend rather than away, and even reached out with her hands to clasp Teera's. "You will be a great glider someday," Pomma said, and pensed her confidence at Teera. After a moment, she felt Teera's hands relax in hers. An idea slowly grew in Pomma's mind of how to both help her friend and ease her unjoyfulness. "Next free day, why don't we all climb to the top of the rooftrees--you, me, and Charn? We can take a picnic. And we'll all practice gliding together."

As Pomma had hoped, the mention of a picnic distracted her friend from any lingering unjoyfulness toward Charn. Food was always a source of delight for Teera.

"Can we take nutcakes?" Teera asked. "And tree mushrooms?"

"Lots of tree mushrooms," Pomma promised. "We might even find fresh ones if we climb high enough."

Teera grinned, joy radiating from her. It was still strange to Pomma how quickly her friend changed and how fiercely she felt things--strange, and exciting. She found herself grinning back. Impulsively, she hugged Teera.

"Do you really think I can learn to glide?" Teera whispered in her ear as they held each other. "To glide as well as a Kindar?"

Pomma didn't answer with words. She pensed her certainty as hard as she could, and took joy in the growing excitement she received in return.

* * *

They met in the farheights by Charn and Teera's family nid-places. Pomma carried with her a basket of food from the public pantry, including the promised nutcakes and tree mushrooms, as well as a large pan-fruit for them to share. Teera supplemented it with three eggs from the paraso nest near her nid-place, and Charn added a handful of roots and fern fronds that he had traded for with classmates who still lived in Upper Erda. All the children paused for a moment to admire their assembled bounty. For Teera and Charn the constant availability of any food was still a source of amazement, while to Pomma, the Erdling food was exciting and exotic.

Surprisingly, Teera was the first to break their shared contemplation. "All right. Where are we going?"

"This way," Pomma said decisively, and slung the basket onto her back.

In truth, she had no specific destination in mind. She just wanted to watch Teera glide and try to understand why her friend was struggling. She led the two Erdling children upward, further into the farheights, until the branches were so thin that they bent and trembled under their footsteps. Pomma balanced easily enough, leaning from side to side without thought. But Teera froze every time the branch shook, and even Charn kept spreading his shuba in startlement, preparing for a fall that never came.

Pomma stopped, and the two Erdling children followed her lead. She stood still for a moment, watching Teera and Charn struggling to keep their balance at each slight gust of wind. Their own efforts only made the branch shake more--particularly when they spread their shuba, giving the wind more purchase. 

A sudden glimmer of an idea came to Pomma. She knew that the instructors in the Garden had worked to teach the Erdling children gliding--but there was more to gliding than control over a shuba. Kindar children glided, strapped to their parents' chests, almost as soon as they were born. They found the rush of wind as comforting as their parents' heartbeats, and they learned as toddlers, under the sharp eyes of their parents, that small drops and tumbles would not harm them so long as there were branches close at hand. Had the instructors realized that, or had they been misled by the advanced age of their students into passing over the most basic lessons?

"Teera," Pomma said finally, softly. "What do you think will happen if you fall off the branch?"

The fragile endgrowth of grundtrees and the lower rooftree fronds clustered below them, their many layers almost as soft and thick as a cushioned nid. Pomma, raised to seek her comfort in the heights and to fear only the ground, which lay an endless distance below their current treetop resting place, felt perfectly at ease. But the instant she asked her question she felt, from Teera, a flash of terror and saw an image of rocks rushing at her from below.

"Charn?"

The boy's reaction was more muted, but his shoulders hunched as he reflexively spread his shuba.

"The ground is very far away," Pomma told them. "It's safe. Here. Let me show you." She tied the basket firmly to the branch with a tendril of vine and began stripping off her shuba.

Teera and Charn both gaped with astonishment. "We were told never to go outside without our shuba," Charn managed, finally, to stammer out.

Pomma nodded. "Your teacher was right. But when we're very young, we don't wear them. We're always watched by our parents then, always. They're never out of reach. But they still let us tumble, sometimes. So we know what it feels like to fall without catching ourselves. So we know all that will happen is--this."

Leaning forward, Pomma let herself fall off the branch. Behind her, she heard Teera let out an unjoyful shriek. Rooftree fronds brushed Pomma's face, and a grundtwig scratched her across one arm. There was a tangle of endgrowth coming toward her, and she reached for it, ready to hang, sima-like, by her arms--only to feel her fall slowly halted. Her body felt light, almost weightless. Suspended in the air by nothing at all, Pomma looked up and saw Teera and Charn staring wide-eyed back down at her through the hole she had made in the greenery, their arms extended, uniforce flowing out of them.

She must have looked as startled as a paraso bird who reaches for a strand of vine to build a nest only to find that it has caught a sima tail in its teeth. Teera was the first to start laughing. Charn joined her, and Pomma, too, found her lips twitching in a giggle, her amusement at the situation buoyed by the overwhelming sense of delight that accompanied the rush of joined energy.

This, she knew suddenly, was the heart of uniforce--not awe and worship, which had made it wither away while she and Teera were kept in the Vine Palace, but love and joy. This was what Raamo had tried so hard to tell them. Still caught in the tide of emotion that came with the uniforce, Pomma found that thoughts of her brother for once brought no sorrow, only the happy remembrance of times they had shared. Her brother had loved the quiet and peace to be found just below the rooftrees' fronds, and she wondered, belatedly, whether her decision to practice gliding here had been driven by a desire to feel closer to him and his wisdom. If so, it was working.

 _Raamo_ , Pomma thought, as the uniforce slowly released her, _you would love to have seen this_. She meant not the uniforce, which many Kindar would have been desperate to have witnessed, but the simple joy of three friends--two Erdling, one Kindar--working together.

"That isn't what happens, usually," Pomma admitted once she was firmly gripping the endgrowth and the uniforce had dissipated entirely. "But you see? You just need to trust yourself and the trees."

"And your friends," Charn piped in.

"And your friends," Pomma agreed.

With a sudden, decisive gesture, Teera began stripping off her shuba. Pomma had meant to climb back up to the branch before anyone followed her lead, but she could tell from Teera's expression that if halted, she might not regain the courage to jump. Moving hand over hand, Pomma shifted sideways, out of the path of her friend's fall. When she reached a place where the endgrowth thickened, she swung herself up with a practiced motion, straddling the mass of twigs.

She was not a moment too soon. Bare arms windmilling, Teera plunged past her. Her dive was less controlled than Pomma's, and she probably would, Pomma thought, have missed the handhold Pomma had targeted. But that thought came later. In the moment, all she felt was the great wash of joy as her energy entwined with Charn's to halt Teera's fall.

Pomma reached out a hand to Teera, who hung upside down, and helped her right herself. 

"Again," Teera said, clutching Pomma's hand. "I want to do that again." Without even trying, Pomma could pense Teera's elation at her own courage.

"Me first!" Charn said.

"You can both jump," Pomma said. "As many times as you want to. And then, after our picnic, we'll try proper gliding."

The excitement she pensed from Teera had no underlay of fear at all.


End file.
